Recorded music - Classic or Dud?

You been reading "Survivor" Tracer?

What is "Survivor"?

Yes. I do.

And until I can play my own electric guitar (well! play it well!) with my own band (that last part's the nevergonnahappen bit), I will.

The plastic ear-pieces are weird though. They should come from a science fiction story.

Yes, every day, in my home, through LARGE black speaker-boxes.

Classic, naturally.

Or thru plastic ear pieces that attach to your head?
Oh christ, that's where they go. I always put them in my mouth.
Classic: You can put your favourite song on repeat. You can skip songs. You can play it extra loud (just to annoy the 80 year old neighbour). You don't need to go to a club where you'll be surrounded by a bunch of peeps smoking, drinking and heckling.

But

* Every time you play it, it's exactly the same. Booooring.

* It can get stolen

* It sounds better through a huge PA than whatever amp you've got

* You don't get to go to a club where there's a bunch of peeps drinking smoking and heckling

Life.

Glenn Gould comes over often with his record collection, and we play the portable turntable on my bed while the two of us sit sprawled over the floor, looking at different sleeves and sighing over the arrangements. Sometimes we'll try to learn one of the crazy new dance steps that you see on back of the lp's. Then my mother usually interrupts us for lunch and says, 'Really, the time you two spend indoors listening to that racket. Go outside, it's a nice day.'

Every time you play it, it's exactly the same

The falsehood of this is pretty much what underlies all the subjectivity/objectivity arguments on this board lately.

Recorded music beats live music because it takes the music out of the control of the producer and into the control of the conumer - simple (OK, complex in implicaton terms) as that.

'Recorded music beats live music because it takes the music out of the control of the producer and into the control of the conumer - simple (OK, complex in implicaton terms) as that.'

Really? Or does it just extend the producer's tentacles into the consumer's private space, even into the consumer's subconscious, like Palmer Eldritch's candy?
Not that that's a bad thing, as producers are a higher species than sloth-like, parasitic consumers.

classic: cuz we get to fuck stars in our dreams, not nothings in our unpandered hollowness...

My this thread is queer! Musicians were defeated in the year 1930 or so when muzak began and its all been down hill. NOw DJs are musicans

Classic, oh so very classic, without it I wouldnt be able to ignore everybody when I want to (ie on the trains, next to cell phone users with my big homiephones) and continue to live in my little shell where MBV play together everyday and Godspeed You Black Emperor rock or Leonard Cohen sings me to sleep on cold wintery nights when the flags are all dead on top of their polls. I guess it is a cheap subsitute. Its like physics vs math or sex vs masterbation if you will.

If it wasnt for recorded music I'd be stuck listening to fiddle music 8 or 9 monthes of the year.

Tighten them strings boys, its time for jig.

plastic ear pieces that attach to your head = comfort = classic.

Recorded music = produced. Production = classic!

In your livingroom = no crowds = classic. Same song every time = boring, unless it's "What a Fool Believes" by the Doobie Brothers, in which case there's only one way you want to hear it, over and over and over and over again.

But come on, now! Do you want to hear Brian Blade canned in your stereo, or do you want to watch him generate a hurricane at the Vanguard?

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"Recorded music beats live music because it takes the music out of the control of the producer and into the control of the conumer"

I don't understand this. Do you mean the ability to press "play"? It is just this ability: to ceaselessly reinvoke this approved little chunk of art over and over that seems... decadent. Not wrong or anything, but a little "stuck". Records are such an effective yardstick. Not even our bone cells are the same from month to month, but a record is embalmed in perpetuity. We can measure our growth with them. This is trully a magical kind of property. Like the way a scent can bring it all back, but different this time.

But this is my point too: most of my friends listen to a CD or twelve every day. Isn't it sort of like compulsively re-reading your diary, or looking at different holiday pictures on a daily basis?

A record takes a verb and turns it into a noun. I can't help but feel that this is bad.

Oi, Hand. Shhh!!

music out of the control of the producer and into the control of the consumer....ultimately the disk/mp3 you are listening to is as slick an advertisement as any to buy more into that group/artist. I would think recording to be the producers medium (per my awful Glenn Gould allusion) The only true control you have is volume and on/off (unless you happen to DJ) - otherwise, going to a show nearly same as buying the cd. But also, yr comment - A record takes a verb and turns it into a noun. I can't help but feel that this is bad - goes alot like the oral/written communication debate, substitute 'recorded' for written and you can start asking the questions - 'are we the worse for recorded media'? Yes, but we had to have a recorded 'map' somehow to get out of our Oral past -> 50's Rock and Roll, Bootlegs, etc.

Damn italics.

I don't understand this. Do you mean the ability to press "play"? It is just this ability: to ceaselessly reinvoke this approved little chunk of art over and over that seems... decadent. Not wrong or anything, but a little "stuck". Records are such an effective yardstick. Not even our bone cells are the same from month to month, but a record is embalmed in perpetuity. We can measure our growth with them. This is trully a magical kind of property. Like the way a scent can bring it all back, but different this time.

That sounds exactly like books. Are books bad, too? Taking away the spontaneity and true art of oral recitations?

But this is my point too: most of my friends listen to a CD or twelve every day. Isn't it sort of like compulsively re-reading your diary, or looking at different holiday pictures on a daily basis?

No, that's different. You see, your diary and your holiday pictures don't need to be reviewed on a daily basis. It's your life, so you remember it. It's not like re-reading someone else's diary every day, not quite, because music often elicits instant emotional responses while you have to "figure out" the lyrics.

Many thoughtful foax have noted their listening "lifespan" -- that if they play a record too often they get sick of it, or et cet. Thus records aren't treated as forever objects on foax lives, but rather objects of a certain duration and utility, sometimes to be assimilated and then sold, sometimes to invoke a particular emotional state, sometimes to spin at a party and boogie down with, et cet.

"Hidden in the word ROLLING STONES are all kinds of smaller words: harmless words such as LONE, sweet words such as LILT, wise words such as LORE. We are NOT INTERESTED in these sweet, wise, harmless words at all. Who would be??? No, what we are looking for are ugly, grimy, horrible words such as ROT, ORT, and GORE, words which are also hidden in ROLLING STONES. How many of these horrors can you think of?" --Meet the Rolling Stones magazine no. 1. Copyright 1964 by Twin Hits, Inc.

This makes Tom's point, I think. (I'm not sure that the "consumer" is more helpless confronted with nonrecorded music, however. I suppose the nonrecorded is less portable, hence less malleable in that sense. But you can always lug it around in your memory.)

All music is live music.

"All music is live music." This is not an utterly vacuous statement, since in context you can probably understand what I'm trying to say, which is that all music - recorded and otherwise - is played in a living environment, used in various changing circumstances, etc. Which, as a point, is not totally vacuous but still rises high in the ranks of vacuity and platitudinous. I like the fan-mag quotation that precedes it, however.

Platitudinous is a duck-billed animal. But it most certainly isn't a noun. In fact, I don't know what the noun form would be here. "Platitudity"? "Neoplatitudinism"? My wits have deserted me, and I surrender.

I don't know that I'm happy with the sensory overload/filtering mode of listening. (Of course, it's better than nothing.) Even though it's not an alternative, I'd prefer to be able to follow a linear evolution.

Didn't John Cage originally object to having his music recorded? And is it because of recording that on tour musicians will play songs with the same "improvisations" at each show?

On the thread about theater, someone mentioned how film has made us embarrassed to watch live actors. I noticed that I sometimes feel embarrassed watching bands. But this may be cos everyone stands close to the stage when it's general admission. This is a tangent - there was a review in the paper a while back about the performance of John Cage's work in the Netherlands. People were free to roam and watch several simultaneous performances. The reviewer felt that the audience didn't give the performers enough space, that the problem was severe enough to affect the quality of the performances. I wouldn't want to step in on a performer's space, but I think it's best when there's common ground, even if imagined.

>>> Didn't John Cage originally object to having his music recorded?

Not only that, but *I* object to having his music recorded.

[italics tidied away]

If this recorded-music issue becomes too big a problem for you, Tracer, I'll happily volunteer to get all those records off your hands.

Please.

Tom: you mean the CD is ours and we can do what we like with it, rather than wait for the band to play our town. Fair enough. But your answer suggested an even cooler idea: in the future all CD players will be 16-tracks, tweakable at your leisure. DVDs will have "extras" like alternate vocal takes, different instrumentation, guest duets, "hidden" until level is brought up. Not such a stretch since we've already got control over the EQ. (For a preview of this exciting new technology: be your own DJ with "No Fun" by Iggy Pop - whack the balance all the way to left or right for Total Mastery of Sound)

Oh. I like that.